I have heard the name Mark Doty spoken in different poetry circles at various events and I have also read a select amount of poems by Doty as well so I figured that I would further my experience of his poetry by reading a collection of is. Though I did not know very much about his life, Doty’s poem “The Embrace” in his collection of selected poems Fire to Fire immersed me into his world with such passion and artistry, I could not put the work down and had to write about it.
This same effect goes for Paul Eluard; although I have read much less of his work than Doty, I knew that Eluard was a poet of love and that in itself drew me towards his collection of poetry Last Love Poems. Eluard’s poetry has a way of consuming you with imagery and accessible detail about his lover and at times gives you a glimpse into his own heart. His poem “Absence”, like Doty’s “The Embrace” is very much about love, but about loss as well.
As I stated before, when I chose Doty’s work, I did not know anything about his life; I did not know that he was a homosexual and that his lover was diagnosed with AIDS and died rather young. I am glad that I decided to read his work before I knew any background because it allowed me to remove myself from any type of bias or preconceptions. I loved the sensitive moments of this piece, the ease at which he flowed through line-by-line and stanza-by-stanza, and also how we never get lost in either the emotion or the trail of events.
When I came across the information about his life, I turned my attention back to his poem “The Embrace”. The raw emotion alone truly resonated with me, as it is the first thing that I look for when reading a poem:
You weren’t well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace. (Doty, 1-4)
Here, Doty has set the story in only four lines. The reader already knows that there is a relationship here, and assumes that it is a romantic one with tender word choices such as “handsomeness” or “tinged” and “grace”. The reader also notices that there is something of great loss in the author’s voice; his loved one is sickly but is still admired.
It is in stanzas three and four that I began to realize the true craft of Mark Doty. Not only was he able to captivate me in the first stanza with powerful language and emotion, I did not even notice how the lines wrapped so eloquently (something that I myself strive for in my formal work, such as the sestina). At first glance, I thought that it might be a sestina because of the six stanzas, but when I realized there were no repeating end words and only four lines to each stanza, I was pleasantly surprised that the stanzas were simply beautiful quatrains:
We seemed to be moving from some old house
where we’d live, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative
by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain? (Doty, 9-16)
In these two stanzas, Doty elongates the lines as they wrap around each other making this narrative poem seem effortless. This way of wrapping the lines is very effective as it allows us to stay immersed in the story without forgetting the plot or the sentiment.
Finally, “The Embrace” illustrates Doty’s overall ability to write narrative poetry. Although this is apparent in the entire piece, the final stanza demonstrates a stanza of completion of both feeling and plot:
Bless you. You came back, so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again. (21-24)
The poem takes a complete full turn and brings the reader from the moments of reminiscing to reality: the lover is gone but still very much alive in the author’s heart and of course memory.
.The second poem that I chose to write about, “Absence” is the epitome of a love poem in my eyes. Much like the previous poem, it opens in a grandiose yet sentimental style that captures the reader’s attention:
I speak to you over cities
I speak to you over plains
my mouth is against your ear
the two sides of the walls face
my voice which acknowledges you.
I speak to you of eternity. (Eluard, 1-6)
“I speak to you over cities/ I speak to you over plains” is almost breathless as Eluard begins his poems. He allows the reader to truly be inside of the poem and experience everything themselves as the account unfolds:
O cities memories of cities
cities draped with our desires
cities early and late
cities strong cities intimate
stripped of all their makers
their thinkers their phantoms (7-12).
The repetition of the word “cities” gathers momentum in the middle of the piece which is needed in order to keep the poem from being a dull list of places that the lovers may have visited or talked about visiting. The language alone is enthralling and takes the written images on the page into the dreamscape that is being unfolded before our eyes. It utilizes ideals that are very common to poems about love such as the feelings of longing and undying hope, but adds different elements as well. There are colors, textures, sounds, and major affectations that make this piece a remarkable love poem:
Landscape ruled by emerald
live living ever-living
the wheat of the sky on our earth
nourishes my voice I dream and cry
I laugh and dream between the flames
between the clusters of sunlight
and over my body your body extends
the layer of its clear mirror (13-20).
You can feel this poem (“ I laugh and dream between the flames/between the cluster of sunlight/and over my body your body extends/the layer of its clear mirror”) and that is what true poetry is about, an experience. Eluard, like Doty, has allowed us to be a part of his heart and its voyage, become a part of his life through words. These two poems are wonderful examples of love poetry, although Doty’s is much more of an emotional narrative while Eluard’s has no concrete storyline but much more abstract emotion that is enhanced by scarce punctuation (which I take very well to), and Eluard’s piece and overall writing is much more traditional in both content and style and Doty’s subject matter and form are much more contemporary. However, they have brilliance in craft certainly in common as well believable emotion. Mark Doty and Paul Eluard showed us that love does not discriminate but is welcome to all walks of life.
*Mark Doty has a blog! Please check it out 🙂
http://markdoty.blogspot.com/
CosmopolitanMuse 